1
GOOD GUYS VS BAD GUYS:
USING BIG DATA TO COUNTERACT
ADVANCED THREATS
Presented at RMISC 2014 by
Kelly Feagans – Senior Sales Engineer, Splunk
Dave Herrald – Principal Security Consultant, GTRI
Content by Joe Goldberg, Splunk
Security Presentation Template
2
Scare
them
Unscare
them
Security Presentation Template
3
Big Data
Advanced
Threats
Here Comes the Scary Part…..
4
Advanced Threats Outpace the Defenders
5
Adversary
You
Time
Technical
Capabilities
Advanced Threats Are Hard to Detect
6
100%
Valid credentials
were used
40
Average # of systems
accessed
243
Median # of days
before detection
63%
Of victims were notified
by external entity
Source: Mandiant M-Trends Report 2012 and 2013
Advanced Threat Pattern – Not Signature Based
7
Infiltration
Back
Door
Exfiltration
Data
GatheringRecon
Phishing
or web
drive-by.
Email has
attached
malware or
link to
malware
Malware
installs
remote
access
toolkit(s)
Malware
obtains
credentials
to key
systems
and
identifies
valuable
data
Data is
acquired
and staged
for
exfiltration
Data is
exfiltrated
as
encrypted
files via
HTTP/S,
FTP, DNS
8
Traditional SIEMs Miss The Threats
 Limited view of security threats. Difficult to collect all data
sources. Costly, custom collectors. Datastore w/schema.
 Inflexible search/reporting hampers investigations and
threat detection
 Scale/speed issues impede ability to do fast analytics
 Difficult to deploy and manage; often multiple products
Better Defensive Cybersecurity Tools Needed
9
Here Comes The Solution
10
Big Data
Big Data is Used Across IT and the Business
11
IT
Ops
Security Compliance
App
Mgmt
Fraud
Business
Intelligence
Big Data
“Big Data” Definition
 Wikipedia: Collection of data sets so large and complex that it
becomes difficult to process using database management tools
 Gartner: The Three Vs
 Data volume
 Data variety
 Data velocity
 Security has always been a Big Data problem; now it has a solution
12
Machine Data / Logs are Big Data
13
2013-08-09 16:21:38 10.11.36.29 98483 148 TCP_HIT 200 200 0 622 - - OBSERVED GET
www.neverbeenseenbefore.com HTTP/1.1 0 "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1;
.NET CLR 2.0.50727; InfoPath.1; MS-RTC LM 8; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; ) User
John Doe,"
08/09/2013 16:23:51.0128event_status="(0)The operation completed successfully. "pid=1300
process_image="John DoeDeviceHarddiskVolume1WindowsSystem32neverseenbefore.exe“
registry_type ="CreateKey"key_path="REGISTRYMACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows
NTCurrentVersion Printers PrintProviders John Doe-PCPrinters{} NeverSeenbefore" data_type""
Endpoint
Logs
Web Proxy
Aug 08 06:09:13 acmesep01.acmetech.com Aug 09 06:17:24 SymantecServer acmesep01: Virus
found,Computer name: ACME-002,Source: Real Time Scan,Risk name: Hackertool.rootkit,Occurrences:
1,C:/Documents and Settings/smithe/Local Settings/Temp/evil.tmp,"""",Actual action:
Quarantined,Requested action: Cleaned, time: 2009-01-23 03:19:12,Inserted: 2009-01-23
03:20:12,End: 2009-01-23 03:19:12,Domain: Default,Group: My CompanyACME Remote,Server:
acmesep01,User: smithe,Source computer: ,Source IP: 10.11.36.20
20130806041221.000000Caption=ACME-2975EBAdministrator Description=Built-in account for
administering the computer/domainDomain=ACME-2975EB InstallDate=NULLLocalAccount = IP:
10.11.36.20 TrueName=Administrator SID =S-1-5-21-1715567821-926492609-725345543
500SIDType=1 Status=Degradedwmi_ type=UserAccounts
Anti-virus
Authentications
Big Data Analytics
14
Security for Business Innovation
Council report, “When
Advanced Persistent Threats
Go Mainstream,”
Chuck Hollis
VP – CTO, EMC Corporation
“The core of the most effective [advanced threat]
response appears to be a new breed of security
analytics that help quickly detect anomalous
patterns -- basically power tools in the hands of a
new and important sub-category of data scientists:
the security analytics expert..”
“[Security teams need] an analytical engine to sift
through massive amounts of real-time and
historical data at high speeds to develop trending
on user and system activity and reveal anomalies
that indicate compromise.”
14
Step 1: Collect ALL The Data in One Location
Servers
Service
Desk
Storage
DesktopsEmail Web
Call
Records
Network
Flows
DHCP/ DNS
Hypervisor
Custom
Apps
Industrial
Control /
HVAC
Badges
Databases
Mobile
Intrusion
Detection
Firewall
Data Loss
Prevention
Anti-
Malware
Vulnerability
Scans
Traditional SIEM
Authentication
15
Need Both Network and Endpoint
And Inbound/Outbound!
16
Enrich Indexed Data with External Data / Lookups
17
Geo-IP
Mapping
3rd-party
threat
intel
Asset
Info
Prohibited
Services /
Apps
Critical
Network
Segments /
Honeypots
Employee
Info
Step 2: Identify Threat Activity
18
 What‟s the M.O. of the attacker? (think like a criminal)
 What/who are the most critical assets and employees?
 What minute patterns/correlations in „normal‟ IT activities
would represent „abnormal‟ activity?
 What in my environment is different/new/changed?
 What is rarely seen or standard deviations off the norm?
Big Data Solution
19
Big Data Architecture
Data Inclusion Model
 All the original data from any source
 No database schema to limit investigations/detection
 Lookups against external data sources
 Search & reporting flexibility
 Advanced correlations
 Math/statistics to baseline and find
outliers/anomalies
 Real-time indexing and alerting
 “Known” and “Unknown” threat detection
 Scales horizontally to 100 TB+ a day on commodity H/W
 One product, UI, and datastore
Big Data Solutions
 Flat file datastore (not database), distributed search, commodity H/W
 More than a SIEM; can use outside security/compliance
20
Incident investigations/forensics, custom reporting, correlations, APT detection, fraud detection
Sample Correlation of Unknown Threats
21
2013-08-09 16:21:38 10.11.36.29 98483 148 TCP_HIT 200 200 0 622 - - OBSERVED GET
www.neverbeenseenbefore.com HTTP/1.1 0 "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1;
.NET CLR 2.0.50727; InfoPath.1; MS-RTC LM 8;.NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; ) User John Doe,"
08/09/2013 16:23:51.0128event_status="(0)The operation completed successfully. "pid=1300
process_image="John DoeDeviceHarddiskVolume1WindowsSystem32neverseenbefore.exe“
registry_type ="CreateKey"key_path="REGISTRYMACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows
NTCurrentVersion Printers PrintProviders John Doe-PCPrinters{} NeverSeenbefore" data_type""
2013-08-09T12:40:25.475Z,,exch-hub-den-01,,exch-mbx-cup-
00,,,STOREDRIVER,DELIVER,79426,<20130809050115.18154.11234@acme.com>,johndoe@acme.com,
,685191,1,,, hacker@neverseenbefore.com , Please open this attachment with payroll information,,
,2013-08-09T22:40:24.975Z
Endpoint
Logs
Web Proxy
Email Server
All three occurring within a 24-hour period
Example Correlation - Spearphishing
User Name
User Name
Rarely seen email domain
Rarely visited web site
User Name
Rarely seen service
Fingerprints of an Advanced Threat
22
What to Look For Why
Data
Source
Attack
Phase
Rarely seen registry, service, DLL. Or they fail
hash checks.
Malware or remote access
toolkit
OS Back door
Account creation or privilege escalation without
corresponding IT service desk ticket
Creating new admin accounts AD/ Service
Desk logs
Lateral
movement
A non-IT machine logging directly into multiple
servers. Or chained logins.
Threat accessing multiple
machines
AD /asset
info
Lateral
movement
For single employee: Badges in at one location,
then logs in countries away
Stealing credentials Badge/
VPN/ Auth
Data
gathering
Employee makes standard deviations more data
requests from file server with confidential data
than normal
Gathering confidential data for
theft
OS Data
gathering
Standard deviations larger traffic flows (incl DNS)
from a host to a given IP
Exfiltration of info NetFlow Exfiltration
Step 3: Remediate and Automate
 Where else in my environment do I see the “Indicators of
Compromise” (IOC)?
 Remediate infected machines
 Fix weaknesses, including employee education
 Turn IOC into a real-time search for future threats
23
Security Realities…
 Big Data is only as good as the data in it and people behind the UI
 No replacement for capable practitioners
 Put math and statistics to work for you
 Encourage IT Security creativity and thinking outside the box
 Fine tuning needed; always will be false positives
24
Recap
25
 Step 1: Collect ALL The Data in One Location
 Step 2: Identify Threat Activity
 Step 3: Remediate and Automate
About Splunk
 Big Data platform for ingesting machine data; desktop to 100+ TB/day
 Many use cases within security; also outside security
 Over 6500 customers total; 2800+ security customers
 Free download and tutorial at www.splunk.com
26
GTRI Splunk Practice Overview
Highlights:
 Splunk‟s 1st Elite Partner and one of only two Splunk Certified Training Centers
in the U.S.
 GTRI provides end-to-end support for Splunk from pre-sales engineering to post-
sales professional services, implementation, training and optimization
 Splunk‟s most credentialed partner in N. America:
 GTRI holds over 60 Splunk Certifications:
 5 Certified Architects
 6 Certified Solutions Engineers (SE-I & SE-2)
Thank You!
http://www.splunk.com/
http://www.gtri.com/

Using Big Data to Counteract Advanced Threats

  • 1.
    1 GOOD GUYS VSBAD GUYS: USING BIG DATA TO COUNTERACT ADVANCED THREATS Presented at RMISC 2014 by Kelly Feagans – Senior Sales Engineer, Splunk Dave Herrald – Principal Security Consultant, GTRI Content by Joe Goldberg, Splunk
  • 2.
  • 3.
  • 4.
    Here Comes theScary Part….. 4
  • 5.
    Advanced Threats Outpacethe Defenders 5 Adversary You Time Technical Capabilities
  • 6.
    Advanced Threats AreHard to Detect 6 100% Valid credentials were used 40 Average # of systems accessed 243 Median # of days before detection 63% Of victims were notified by external entity Source: Mandiant M-Trends Report 2012 and 2013
  • 7.
    Advanced Threat Pattern– Not Signature Based 7 Infiltration Back Door Exfiltration Data GatheringRecon Phishing or web drive-by. Email has attached malware or link to malware Malware installs remote access toolkit(s) Malware obtains credentials to key systems and identifies valuable data Data is acquired and staged for exfiltration Data is exfiltrated as encrypted files via HTTP/S, FTP, DNS
  • 8.
    8 Traditional SIEMs MissThe Threats  Limited view of security threats. Difficult to collect all data sources. Costly, custom collectors. Datastore w/schema.  Inflexible search/reporting hampers investigations and threat detection  Scale/speed issues impede ability to do fast analytics  Difficult to deploy and manage; often multiple products
  • 9.
  • 10.
    Here Comes TheSolution 10 Big Data
  • 11.
    Big Data isUsed Across IT and the Business 11 IT Ops Security Compliance App Mgmt Fraud Business Intelligence Big Data
  • 12.
    “Big Data” Definition Wikipedia: Collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using database management tools  Gartner: The Three Vs  Data volume  Data variety  Data velocity  Security has always been a Big Data problem; now it has a solution 12
  • 13.
    Machine Data /Logs are Big Data 13 2013-08-09 16:21:38 10.11.36.29 98483 148 TCP_HIT 200 200 0 622 - - OBSERVED GET www.neverbeenseenbefore.com HTTP/1.1 0 "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; InfoPath.1; MS-RTC LM 8; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; ) User John Doe," 08/09/2013 16:23:51.0128event_status="(0)The operation completed successfully. "pid=1300 process_image="John DoeDeviceHarddiskVolume1WindowsSystem32neverseenbefore.exe“ registry_type ="CreateKey"key_path="REGISTRYMACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersion Printers PrintProviders John Doe-PCPrinters{} NeverSeenbefore" data_type"" Endpoint Logs Web Proxy Aug 08 06:09:13 acmesep01.acmetech.com Aug 09 06:17:24 SymantecServer acmesep01: Virus found,Computer name: ACME-002,Source: Real Time Scan,Risk name: Hackertool.rootkit,Occurrences: 1,C:/Documents and Settings/smithe/Local Settings/Temp/evil.tmp,"""",Actual action: Quarantined,Requested action: Cleaned, time: 2009-01-23 03:19:12,Inserted: 2009-01-23 03:20:12,End: 2009-01-23 03:19:12,Domain: Default,Group: My CompanyACME Remote,Server: acmesep01,User: smithe,Source computer: ,Source IP: 10.11.36.20 20130806041221.000000Caption=ACME-2975EBAdministrator Description=Built-in account for administering the computer/domainDomain=ACME-2975EB InstallDate=NULLLocalAccount = IP: 10.11.36.20 TrueName=Administrator SID =S-1-5-21-1715567821-926492609-725345543 500SIDType=1 Status=Degradedwmi_ type=UserAccounts Anti-virus Authentications
  • 14.
    Big Data Analytics 14 Securityfor Business Innovation Council report, “When Advanced Persistent Threats Go Mainstream,” Chuck Hollis VP – CTO, EMC Corporation “The core of the most effective [advanced threat] response appears to be a new breed of security analytics that help quickly detect anomalous patterns -- basically power tools in the hands of a new and important sub-category of data scientists: the security analytics expert..” “[Security teams need] an analytical engine to sift through massive amounts of real-time and historical data at high speeds to develop trending on user and system activity and reveal anomalies that indicate compromise.” 14
  • 15.
    Step 1: CollectALL The Data in One Location Servers Service Desk Storage DesktopsEmail Web Call Records Network Flows DHCP/ DNS Hypervisor Custom Apps Industrial Control / HVAC Badges Databases Mobile Intrusion Detection Firewall Data Loss Prevention Anti- Malware Vulnerability Scans Traditional SIEM Authentication 15
  • 16.
    Need Both Networkand Endpoint And Inbound/Outbound! 16
  • 17.
    Enrich Indexed Datawith External Data / Lookups 17 Geo-IP Mapping 3rd-party threat intel Asset Info Prohibited Services / Apps Critical Network Segments / Honeypots Employee Info
  • 18.
    Step 2: IdentifyThreat Activity 18  What‟s the M.O. of the attacker? (think like a criminal)  What/who are the most critical assets and employees?  What minute patterns/correlations in „normal‟ IT activities would represent „abnormal‟ activity?  What in my environment is different/new/changed?  What is rarely seen or standard deviations off the norm?
  • 19.
    Big Data Solution 19 BigData Architecture Data Inclusion Model  All the original data from any source  No database schema to limit investigations/detection  Lookups against external data sources  Search & reporting flexibility  Advanced correlations  Math/statistics to baseline and find outliers/anomalies  Real-time indexing and alerting  “Known” and “Unknown” threat detection  Scales horizontally to 100 TB+ a day on commodity H/W  One product, UI, and datastore
  • 20.
    Big Data Solutions Flat file datastore (not database), distributed search, commodity H/W  More than a SIEM; can use outside security/compliance 20 Incident investigations/forensics, custom reporting, correlations, APT detection, fraud detection
  • 21.
    Sample Correlation ofUnknown Threats 21 2013-08-09 16:21:38 10.11.36.29 98483 148 TCP_HIT 200 200 0 622 - - OBSERVED GET www.neverbeenseenbefore.com HTTP/1.1 0 "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; InfoPath.1; MS-RTC LM 8;.NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; ) User John Doe," 08/09/2013 16:23:51.0128event_status="(0)The operation completed successfully. "pid=1300 process_image="John DoeDeviceHarddiskVolume1WindowsSystem32neverseenbefore.exe“ registry_type ="CreateKey"key_path="REGISTRYMACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersion Printers PrintProviders John Doe-PCPrinters{} NeverSeenbefore" data_type"" 2013-08-09T12:40:25.475Z,,exch-hub-den-01,,exch-mbx-cup- 00,,,STOREDRIVER,DELIVER,79426,<20130809050115.18154.11234@acme.com>,johndoe@acme.com, ,685191,1,,, hacker@neverseenbefore.com , Please open this attachment with payroll information,, ,2013-08-09T22:40:24.975Z Endpoint Logs Web Proxy Email Server All three occurring within a 24-hour period Example Correlation - Spearphishing User Name User Name Rarely seen email domain Rarely visited web site User Name Rarely seen service
  • 22.
    Fingerprints of anAdvanced Threat 22 What to Look For Why Data Source Attack Phase Rarely seen registry, service, DLL. Or they fail hash checks. Malware or remote access toolkit OS Back door Account creation or privilege escalation without corresponding IT service desk ticket Creating new admin accounts AD/ Service Desk logs Lateral movement A non-IT machine logging directly into multiple servers. Or chained logins. Threat accessing multiple machines AD /asset info Lateral movement For single employee: Badges in at one location, then logs in countries away Stealing credentials Badge/ VPN/ Auth Data gathering Employee makes standard deviations more data requests from file server with confidential data than normal Gathering confidential data for theft OS Data gathering Standard deviations larger traffic flows (incl DNS) from a host to a given IP Exfiltration of info NetFlow Exfiltration
  • 23.
    Step 3: Remediateand Automate  Where else in my environment do I see the “Indicators of Compromise” (IOC)?  Remediate infected machines  Fix weaknesses, including employee education  Turn IOC into a real-time search for future threats 23
  • 24.
    Security Realities…  BigData is only as good as the data in it and people behind the UI  No replacement for capable practitioners  Put math and statistics to work for you  Encourage IT Security creativity and thinking outside the box  Fine tuning needed; always will be false positives 24
  • 25.
    Recap 25  Step 1:Collect ALL The Data in One Location  Step 2: Identify Threat Activity  Step 3: Remediate and Automate
  • 26.
    About Splunk  BigData platform for ingesting machine data; desktop to 100+ TB/day  Many use cases within security; also outside security  Over 6500 customers total; 2800+ security customers  Free download and tutorial at www.splunk.com 26
  • 27.
    GTRI Splunk PracticeOverview Highlights:  Splunk‟s 1st Elite Partner and one of only two Splunk Certified Training Centers in the U.S.  GTRI provides end-to-end support for Splunk from pre-sales engineering to post- sales professional services, implementation, training and optimization  Splunk‟s most credentialed partner in N. America:  GTRI holds over 60 Splunk Certifications:  5 Certified Architects  6 Certified Solutions Engineers (SE-I & SE-2)
  • 28.

Editor's Notes

  • #21 What is not big data - data warehouses/database. They cannot take in all the original data. Also often batch-oriented, not real-time. Explain the key security use cases